Earlier in the week, I revisited the idea of the Senate GOP contemplating a step they do not want to take, but might have to in order to be the adult party and reopen government.
If you missed it, it's a nifty little gimmick where you'd use the nuclear option to change the Senate's standing rules allowing short-term clean continuing resolutions to pass on a simple majority instead of a 60-vote threshold. There's a sound argument for why to do it, and when I wrote that column last weekend, it made sense for the GOP conference to consider it.
Events this week, however, have shown that whatever window for the Republicans acting unilaterally to reopen government have now gone out the window. As former Bill Clinton political guru James Carville once said, "When your opponent is drowning, throw him an anvil."
To say the Democrats have lost the script on how to message the shutdown would be a gross understatement. Whatever cohesiveness the left-wing political class had in shaping the narrative as a Republican shutdown blew up this week. Polling data has shown that Republican favorability numbers, especially within the House GOP, have skyrocketed since the shutdown began a little more than five weeks ago.
Two weeks ago, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, the pied piper of the Senate Democratic conference, uttered the infamous words, "Every day gets better for us." For the National Republican Senatorial Committee, the ad wrote itself.
Week 3 of the Schumer Shutdown:
— Senate Republicans (@NRSC) October 17, 2025
"Every day gets better for us." pic.twitter.com/1qeNKhvcfI
Flash forward to Wednesday morning. 14 days of getting progressively better didn't look the way I thought it would for Senator Schumer when he held his press conference and had to explain SNAP recipients not getting food money as a result of his shutdown.
No one is going to confuse Chuck Schumer with Charlie Sheen in the winning department. He's an absolute mess. He's testy and torqued off that there was a reporter not willing to take dictation from him. He's lost the script. You could see him beginning to flop sweat when he bailed out of one reporter and discovered another one picking up on the pushback. Going into the shutdown, Schumer had to figure the media would carry the ball just like it has every time the Republicans regrettably pulled a shutdown stunt. The problem is now that people are getting hurt, and Democrats themselves are admitting it's their shutdown because they needed the leverage, media is increasingly unwilling to be the only rats left on a burning ship.
I especially appreciate the legal turbo flex Democrats are floating - Sue the federal government to restore the funding for SNAP and WIC recipients they have voted themselves to shut down 13 times.
Congresswoman Melanie Stansbury tried to steamroll Jake Tapper on CNN, someone who routinely is much more tolerating of Democratic partisan spin than he is of Republicans. I'm sure she didn't expect to have to spar with Jake, but her argument is so preposterous, even Tapper had to push back.
REP. STANSBURY: “The administration is choosing to starve American children.”
— Breaking911 (@Breaking911) October 29, 2025
CNN: “This is a choice by Senate Democrats to not open the government.”
REP. STANSBURY: “No it’s not.”
CNN: “Yes it is.” pic.twitter.com/nl2IOlAvRp
Vermont Senator Peter Welch got embarrassed by Joe Kernen on CNBC's Squawk Box, and had no coherent response.
Senator Peter Welch gets called out for the Democrats' shutdown.
— RNC Research (@RNCResearch) October 29, 2025
CNBC: "Are you ready to vote...to reopen the government...as a reasonable Democrat?"
WELCH: "I'm not there yet."
CNBC: "This is the right way to do it? People not getting paychecks? This is extortion." pic.twitter.com/YSHCyt7gRY
Notice, he said, "I'm not there...yet." Welch is a lefty, but he knows they've been beaten. He's looking for a way out of Schumer's shutdown.
For 29 days, House Speaker Mike Johnson has dealt one body blow after another. He does so by keeping his composure, using reason, argument, and a winsome personality to appeal to people trying to gauge for themselves who to blame for the federal spigot being turned off.
Now the largest labor unions are pleading with the Democrats to pass the House’s clean CR funding bill and END THE SHUTDOWN IMMEDIATELY.
— Speaker Mike Johnson (@SpeakerJohnson) October 30, 2025
Their message is simple: Pay America’s workers. Reopen the government.
Democrats are losing the working class. pic.twitter.com/AhIpn9BDnQ
He is definitely the good cop. John Thune, his counterpart leading the Republicans in the Senate, where the impasse continues into three-quarters of a Biblical flooding event in length today, is also usually a good cop. I've known Senator Thune since he was a Congressional candidate for South Dakota on a Young Guns tour of Republican freshmen in the early 2000's. He's a graduate of BIOLA, the Bible Institute of Los Angeles. He's about as mild-mannered in his personality as you'll find. He's tough as nails when he has to be, but he's an honest broker and is very slow to anger. But we all learned something yesterday. John Thune does have a boiling point. It comes at 29 days.
I worked for Sen. Thune for three years and I never once heard him raise his voice or get this angry.
— Erin Maguire (@ErinMMaguire) October 29, 2025
Democrats picked the wrong Senate Majority Leader to play political games with. pic.twitter.com/F6Xt7lX6kH
And unlike previous shutdowns caused by Republicans when there's a Democrat in the White House with the bully pulpit, Chuck Schumer, supergenius, chose to pull this stunt with Donald Trump and J.D. Vance at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue providing close aerial support. First, Donald Trump on the last leg of his Asia-Pacific trip in South Korea.
"All I want to do is very simple — I want to get the country open, and then we're going to discuss" health care... "Obamacare is a horrible mess and it has been from the beginning... Democrats want to make it worse."pic.twitter.com/FShpsug0MX
— Rapid Response 47 (@RapidResponse47) October 30, 2025
Trump's message? It's still the same as Michael Corleone's in Godfather II. 'My offer is this. Nothing.'
Vice-President Vance, giving a speech to a packed arena at the University of Mississippi for a Charlie Kirk Turning Point USA rally, followed up with a Q&A session from audience members with no notes. Among them? Someone challening him on the shutdown. Vance's answer was a masterclass response.
There are exactly ZERO Democrats who can contend with the argument Vance presents here on the Schumer Shutdown.
— Gunther Eagleman™ (@GuntherEagleman) October 30, 2025
He excels in intellect on scales the left can't comprehend. pic.twitter.com/m5XGZnaG2Q
Now compare that answer to Texas Congresswoman Jasmine Crockett's rhetorical skills.
.@RepJasmine says President Trump and Republicans are "disrespecting" federal workers, who are not getting paid due to the shutdown Democrats created.
— Rapid Response 47 (@RapidResponse47) October 29, 2025
Republicans have voted over a DOZEN TIMES to pay federal workers and reopen the government. Democrats blocked it every time. pic.twitter.com/x5zgJuNM7y
Republicans are disrepecting federal workers by voting 13 times to reopen government and get them paid. How can one argue seriously with that? It's like trying to convince an aardvark of the theory of relativity using only a blender and a kazoo.
House minority leader Hakeem Jeffries was asked about cracks showing in the armor of solidarity on the Democratic side, and he was incensed at the suggestion.
Hakeem Jeffries isn't happy when asked about a break in the Democrat Party over the shutdown:
— RNC Research (@RNCResearch) October 29, 2025
REPORTER: "We're starting to see some cracks in your conference..."
JEFFRIES: "Let me explain something you! There are ZERO cracks on the Democratic side!" pic.twitter.com/1qw0B4tJx2
Hakeem, may I introduce you to one of your zeroes, Josh Gottheimer?
Democrat Josh Gottheimer - who voted for the shutdown - now says Dems should open the government
— RNC Research (@RNCResearch) October 29, 2025
"Would you call on Senate Democrats to just go ahead and pass the CR?"
GOTTHEIMER: "...What's a very fair deal is open the government...I don't understand what's so hard about that" pic.twitter.com/tIPyJ6i7j2
I don't know about you, but that sounds kind of crack-y to me. Another of Hakeem's zeroes is California's Josh Harder, who joined the Leverage Caucus (along with House Minority Whip Katherine Clark and Delaware Senator Chris Coons). It's an untenable position for Democrats to blame Republicans for the shutdown while sporting members in both chambers admitting they're keeping the shutdown going in an attempt for leverage, meaning everyone suffereing - poor people on food assistance, WIC recipients, servicemembers in the military, federal employees, they're all pawns.
So you add all this up - the mixed messaging, media not buying the spin, and the inevitable deliterious effects of the shutdown itself, and you add to that federal employee union bosses and air traffic control association leaders demanding an end to the shutdown now, Democrats have lost. It's over. The heart may be beating, but the brain is dead. They know it privately, the media knows it, and the Republicans know it. That's why the chance of a rule change is non-existent now. It's no longer a matter of if, but when the Democrats collapse in the Senate and vote for the clean CR. The field is coming to the Republicans, so they're not about to do them a favor and make it easier for them by changing the rule.
Maybe you are someone that is having to take on debt in order to pay bills while the shutdown drones on, a fact that Democratic Pennsylvania Senator John Fetterman noted on X Wednesday.
Our workers are forced to get a loan just to get by.
— U.S. Senator John Fetterman (@SenFettermanPA) October 29, 2025
As a Democrat, this stalemate doesn’t feel like support for working families to me.
End the shutdown or own the fallout. pic.twitter.com/cqnbW6lRh1
There is a problem arising that no one is talking about, and a second conundrum facing the Democrats with respect to the timing of their capitulation.
The first is that even if the Democrats do vote for the C.R. imminently, it's really almost too late. Most of the lane provided by the language in the C.R. in the Senate has been sailed through by intransigent Democrats. The continuing resolution passed by the House that is sitting on the deak in the upper chamber is a seven-week spending package at existing levels. Seven weeks. We just hit five of those seven weeks yesterday. Even if the Democrats relent and Trump signs the C.R., we'll have something like 10 days until we're right back in the soup again. The House will have to pass another C.R., which they'll probably do being that their polling numbers rose between five to eight points in multiple polls. But then, it's right back to the Senate. Schumer and the Democrats have set themselves up in such a no-win situation that they'll have to cave twice in two weeks on the same freaking spending bill, and they won't get anything out of it...twice.
If Schumer and the Democrats ultimately vote for the existing package, after voting against it 13 times, will they really have the stones to vote down the second C.R. two weeks after finally relenting on the first one? Will they blame Trump when they cause a second shutdown, thinking enough American people will buy the spin? It's laughably absurd. Schumer's box canyon he led his conference into might be exquisitely shaped where the only way out leads them into a second box canyon.
Now for the other problem Democrats face. When they inevitably cave, and the backchannel conversations between Senate Republicans and Democrats this week wanting to end the shutdown indicate they will cave, the big question is about the timing of it. The natural time for Democrats to have folded was after the No Kings/Doodah parades a couple weekends ago. That would have been the smartest time to cut their losses. But no one ever accused Chuck Schumer of being either a gifted strategist or brilliant tactician.
Now, they are faced with two pretty big canaries in the coal mine. In New Jersey, Jack Ciattarelli is within a whisker of Mikie Sherill for the governor's race. Early voting is aleady underway, and it's still whisker thin. What will happen to same day voting if the Democrats cave on the shutdown for absolutely nothing?
In the Commonwealth of Virginia, Winsome Earl-Sears has closed to within margin of error distance with Abigail Spanberger in a race no one thought would be close. Sears has much longer odds of pulling off the upset to be certain, but Northern Virginia, the biggest driver of turnout in the Commonwealth, is also chock full of furloughed and/or permanently reduced in force federal employees. What will the impact on Virginia's same day turnout be on Tuesday if all those federal workers who were sacrificed for Schumer's shutdown and the Democrats didn't get one positive thing out of it?
Conventional wisdom would indicate that the party having to capitulate on a shutdown that close to an election will see their base flatten and stay home. Losing both of those races would be catastrophic for the Democratic Party, so the thinking is the shutdown will have to go on until after Tuesday when Democrats can hopefully, according to them, eke out narrow victories and claim landslides.
But there's nothing conventional about this shutdown. It is devoid of strategic vision, and there's really no analog to where we are as a country right now, ideologically speaking. There is a counternarrative developing due to alarming polling data provided by that right-wing outlet, CNN. Here's Harry Enten with the ominous warning.
Democrat strategists' nightmare scenario is that the least worst option for them might be to crash out of the shutdown before the Virginia and New Jersey elections, before the polling gets even worse for them. Yes, they'll get flattened on same day turnout, but they might be already flattening the longer this goes on.
And if this trend continues into the holidays and flights are delayed or cancelled by the thousands because of ground stops and personnel shortages due to the shutdown, Democrats' coal they get in their stockings this Christmas might be all they have to sell to fund primary races in March. The long and short of it is neither option, caving before or after the NJ and VA elections, is much of a winner for Chuck Schumer and the Democrats.
By the way, if you don't think this stunt has the ability to do real long-term damage to Democrats' brand, check out what got put together by Republicans in Arizona to deal with their two Democratic Senators, Ruben Gallego and Mark Kelly.
Don’t think this is a Schumer shutdown?
— Rep. Eli Crane (@RepEliCrane) October 30, 2025
Here is 2.5 minutes of Arizona’s two democrat senators. Voting no. Every single time.
Party over country, I guess. pic.twitter.com/3wJIoUO7gf
That's a hell of a thing to have out there if you're a lefty seeking votes for reelection someday - having a video showing you giving a thumbs down 13 times to prevent food assistance and military servicemember paychecks from going out right before the holidays.
Not even John McCain was ever quite that mavericky.
Join the conversation as a VIP Member